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Warp Pipe Group May Bring Online Gaming to DS
dolphin558 writes "Warp Pipe may be in partnership with Nintendo to bring online gaming to the Nintendo DS! What's more, the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming that hasn't been seen before. A press conference is scheduled for October 7th. I cannot wait!" This would seem to partially confirm earlier speculations, and partially explain Warp Pipe's decision earlier this year.
Can we say SHITCOCK?!?!!
What's more, the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming that hasn't been seen before
Ohhh, a "social aspect" to online gaming. I've never heard anybody pitch that before.
I knew there was a good reason for me to keep my dial up ISP.
If you think
One second, wasn't warp pipe a small team of like 3 people that developed a little tunneling app to get Gamecube online? This is the whole team responsible for Nintendo's future online plans?
Well then, looks like Nintendo's finally decided on a competitive online plan, one that will most surely rival the best offerings of Microsoft and Sony... hats off to them.
There's been a online gaming services with a social aspect. The only way this would make sense is if they meant "Never been seen in online console gaming"
;)
Sheesh, I remember The Sierra Network (then ImaginNation) which had chatrooms that you could invite people to play card games, checkers, chess, then later, red baron, boogers, and other more graphical games. There was even a dungeons and dragons-type world to play in and trade items, like everquest.
Man, I remember when I first got that service, I only had a 2400bps modem and couldn't play red baron since it required a 9600, but my dad got a 14.4, and man, that was SWEET.
That service was my first contact with online-ness... chat, gaming and email. and that was in like 1990 or so.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
...when the name of your social club is "Warp Pipe."
I'd be quaking in my boots about now... Seriously, the opinion has really shifted. At first everyone thought the PSP would smackdown the DS. But Nintendo bit by bit is slowly showing us that there is far more to the DS than meets the eye. While Sony seems to have shown all their cards for the PSP, it looks like Nintendo has a whole lot up their sleeve.
What's more, the project is supposed to add a "social aspect" to online gaming
finally a way for me to play games and satisfy my social needs at the same time! i see no real reason for me to ever leave my room again. thankyou nintendo!
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
If you've been following Nintendo at all then you know that this is great news! The big N has been doing a lot lately to clean up their act (anyone watch their E3 breifing? Reggie rocks!). I fully expect Nintendo to be the dominant player duking it out with Microsoft in the next couple generations.
Nintendo recognizes talent when they see it. The Warp Pipe folks created a thriving online community on the Nintendo Gamecube with little to no first party support. The DS has a lot of unique online potential due to its portability. I'm anxious to see what they come up with.
Nintendo has come out with a portable gaming machine. Nothing new there, but now, while out living my real life, I can play a video game where I live out my real life? I want a game modeled after reality, where in my game, I can see myself playing my game, while looking at myself playing my game. I think I get it now, I'm not real, I'm stuck in an infinite page fault.
i still can't help but worry about battery life.
If they've chosen not to have social lives by now, why would they want to start one in a video game
Because their guild demands it.
Never confuse volume with power.
They bring it online, we take it offline.
God spoke to me:
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
I'm so glad to see respect from the institutional gaming companies shown toward the homebrew exploiters. People wanted Online gaming, Warp Pipe gave it, and Nintendo applauded with alleged business relations. We've come a long way from Bleem!
The folks over at http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/ are gonna attempt to create an online tunnel similar to their xbox/PS2 tunnels. It'll be interesting to see how the system compares to the one stated in the article. I'm assuming the Xlink system will be free (since it is for the xbox and PS2).
Judging from some of the stuff at game cubicle forums, I have some guesses what they could do.
They could use 802.11 and multiple DS's as repeaters. I bet the protocols for DS games won't take up much bandwidth so repeating 20 other packets won't be too bad. You could probably play against people X hops away.
The other thing (something I've already done) is WiFi tracking. It would be relatively easy to do wifi tracking of people based on relative positioning and varying signal strengths. You could create a wifi based compass pointing you to anybody with a DS nearby (given 3 people with DS nearby). This could make for some interesting discovery ideas.
There was some cellphone game that was big in Japan that was on Slashdot awhile back that used real places (based on cell tower "gps") to affect game play. This could be another application of a similar principle.
This could be real fun if dealt with properly. I'd be impressed if they get this down right.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
so you all better brush up on your Portuguese.
-my other sig is your mom
All Nintendo does is gaming. Their entire life is based off of how well their gaming consoles do. You point out that Microsoft and Sony both have other departments that handle their guaranteed company profit, so both can do whatever they want and if it ends up bombing they can patch that wound up with wads of cash from their other divisions. Nintendo can't do that, so they need to make sure the DS is consumer friendly. Nintendo can't afford to pull a Virtual Boy now when they're in a tug of awar with Microsoft while trying to catch up to Sony. Nintendo could afford to pull a Virtual Boy when they actually did it because it was at the console turn before the N64 when they were still the kings of gaming. When their only competition was Sega, a gaming only company as you imply, they could ignore the end user and not care about how crappy their commercials were. Word of mouth and the idea that all of gaming could be termed as "playing Nintendo" took care of that for them.
Now, when more and more people term gaming as "playing Playstation," the Big N's in a tight spot. And you wonder why, even after pointing out how much of a tight spot they're in in your very own post, Nintendo doesn't act like the stuck up, my-way-or-the-highway jackasses they did in the pre-N64 era? They've evolved into a new company and they know now they need to market better, and if by collaborating with people who essentially are saying "Nintendo, your Gamecube internet connectability is abysmal, and we've done something about it" means they're "teaming up with shady tool developers" then Valve buying up the Counterstrike guys could be termed as "hiring some shady mod programmers" even though the decision is the number one reason why Valve is so filthy rich today.
They came out dead last in the next gen console wars
If by dead last, you mean outselling the xbox, then yeah, you're right. But I believe most people reserver the term "dead last" to mean "sold the least consoles of any major game console," in which case, the xbox is in dead last. Worldwide, more gamecubes have been sold than xboxes. And keep in mind that the gamecube has been very profitable for Nintendo. They don't need to be in first place to keep making consoles and games.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Hi, how is Bizarro-World these days?
I think you'll find that the Gameboy IS Nintendo's bread and butter these days. Please see this article for a review of the numbers. Please note that these numbers are 6 months old. You'll clearly see that the Gameboy outsells the Cube 3 to 1.
Just because you don't see people roaming the streets playing the GBA frantically doesn't mean they're not out there. Most people play them at home for convenience.
The article is good publicity for Warp Pipe. Which, as it clearly identifies, is now a business.
However, the article basically takes some random actions on the part of the Warp Pipe team (i.e. posting images with a DS badly photoshopped into them), combines them with some random allusions and common assumptions (i.e. Marionette, online play), and then pulls a patent applying to the Gameboy Color out of nowhere.
Out of that we get:
1. Warp Pipe is now a business.
2. A bunch of people know big things but aren't telling us, and won't even confirm that they know big things that they won't tell us.
3. GBC Patent.
4. This somehow correlates into the DS being online.
So what do we get? Questionable rumors and what's probably hype over Warp Pipe's next project. I mean, is anyone else getting anything out of this beyond Warp Pipe publicity?
Nothing against Warp Pipe, mind you, as they've done great things on the Gamecube. I find myself wondering if they're just using all this mysterious BS to simply hedge their bets (and bets that are theirs alone) should the DS not fit into their online schemes.
There are so many of you that just put everything down, anyhting new that comes in, you have to put it down. Don't you guys know anything? Why are you so negative about these great things coming to our consoles, PCs, and handheld peripherals? Geez, I better not see any of you enjoying the PSP or DS or any console if you're going to be so negative about anything great that happens to it. Jesus, you'd think this was a 2Yr old Baby convention. Some get them their warm bottle of "shut the fuck up"
Flat Screen TV for F
While that may be true for most X-Box gamers, most middle/high school kids don't live in a dark closet.
My kids for instance, are very social with their gaming. My children and their friends have set up group gaming battles in Pokemon Stadium where everyone brings over their carts and plays against each others characters. They arrange trades, etc...
One of my children bugged me constantly to try and convince me to let him take his Animal Crossing memory card to school so that he can take turns trading towns with a friend so they can visit each other's towns to trade fruit, etc... So on, and so forth...
I for one am very excited about the added social dynamics to be introduced here. Any thing that get's kids out and engaged with their peers has a lot of positive potential.
The first I've heard about warp pipes involvement and the online aspects of the new DS was over at engadget. Once there i followed a few links to the gamecube forums and found a lot of really neat stuff and puzzles that Nintendo has released to the public on what the DS's online capabilities will be. The stuff is really cool, and I invite you all to check it out and let me know what you think.
Link to puzzles and gamecube forum: http://www.gamecubicle.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=3035 /
Im especially curious about the picture of the Marionette heheh (Mario Net) and the boy in the woods with the dog. Check it out and tell me what you think.
Also after reading through all the information and speculation on what the DS online capabilities are going to be I read that the reason that Nintendo didnt want to go online with the cube was because the didnt want to charge their customers monthly fees like Sony and M$. However Nintendo has been wanting to go online for sometime and doing it witht the DS offers them a way to do it for free. Imagine if you will your DS as a repeater hub, then imagine being able to plug your gamecube or next gen Nintendo console into your DS and being connected global multiplayer areana. I honestely havent read anything cooler in a long time, and to repeat whaty someone said in the gamecube forum. "man Nintendo really knows how to sell a gaming system!!
Link to engadget where my adventure started: http://engadget.com/entry/4182100443364188/